Colonel R. B. Marcy, 1857

Marcey left Fort Bridger in south west Wyoming with forty men to cross the mountains by the most direct route to New Mexico on November 24, 1857. The march was fifty one days long ending up at Fort Massachusetts in New Mexico. It was believed that the trip would take twenty-five days.

“On the 8th of December we struck Grand River near the confluence of its two principal branches, the Uncompahdre and the Bunkara. We forded them, but with much difficulty, as the water was deep and rapid, and filled with floating ice, and encamped at the base of the ‘elk Mountain,’ near the remains of an old Indian trading establishment, which had formerly been occupied by a man named Robedeau, of St. Louis, who wandered out onto this remove wilderness many years ago, but was subsequently driven away and his buildings burned by the Indians.”

“Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border. Comprising Descriptions of the Indian Nomads of the Plains; Explorations of New Territory; A Trip Across the Rocky Mountains in the Winter; Descriptions of the Habits of Different Animals Found in the West, and the Methods of Hunting them; With Incidents in the life of Different Frontier Men, &c., &c.” Marcy, Colonel R. B. U.S.A., New York, 1866: p. 229.